300 Kanji in 30 Days — Kanji Koohii
We’ll start out with what should be an easy kanji for most upper beginner or lower intermediate students. If you don’t know it yet, that’s okay, we’ll study it together.
安
安 (アン) is a third-grade character (according to the Jōyō system) and comes in on Heisig’s list at #202. It’s used in words such as 安全 (あんぜん) — safety, 安定 (あんてい) — stability, and 安い (や.すい) — cheap. If you look it up in a kanji dictionary you’ll find various meanings listed such as: relax, cheap, low (as in price), quiet, rested, contented, and peaceful. I think most people think of this kanji as meaning cheap because of the very common adjective it’s used to write (安い) or something like relax or peace because of the common nouns it’s used in (such as 安全).
This kanji is composed of two parts: 宀 and 女. The second part is easiest: 女 is the kanji for woman. So, of course, the keyword we’ll use for this part of the kanji is woman.
The first part, 宀, is called うかんむり in Japanese. かんむり (冠) means “crown” in Japanese and I guess they imagine the shape is somewhat similar to the katakana ウ, thus う・かんむり. In English, this part is usually called the roof radical and in Heisig’s system it’s known as the roof primitive. So, the keyword for this part is roof. Roof gives us a lot of freedom when using it to make up stories. We could also imagine that anything that is under the roof is also at home or in the house.
This kanji’s keyword in Heisig’s book is relax. So, we need to make up a story using the keywords of the two parts that make up this kanji, woman and roof (or at home, in the house) that also makes us think of relax:
a Woman RELAXing At Home
Simple enough but perhaps too simple and, thus, easy to forget. Hmm…how about:
stay-At-Home Women just RELAX all day
A bit sexist. That’s good…I mean…no, that’s bad, of course, but it is good for memorizing. Slightly weird or controversial or bad or funny or erotic things are easier to remember than simple or normal things. Whatever works best for you is okay. Also, notice that I currently like to capitilize component keywords and put the kanji’s keyword itself in all caps. You don’t have to do that, of course. It’s just the way I like to do it.
So as long as we know what woman and roof look like, we should be able to easily memorize what this kanji looks like and what it means by simply remembering this silly little story.
I realize that I’m making the assumption that you’ve already memorized woman and roof. Well, what if you haven’t already memorized them? Memorization of these basic shapes and primitives will occur naturally as you study. Roof looks like a roof and woman looks like a pregnant woman. And, these parts are used so often in the other kanji that you’re going to be studying every day that you should be able to just memorize them out of necessity with no special effort required.
But, wait a second! Everybody knows this kanji actually does mean cheap, and not relax. So, why did Heisig decide to call it relax? Well, keep in mind that these stories build up over time so he may have wished to use it in the story for another kanji later and he felt that relax worked better than cheap.
Anyway, if you really disagree with a keyword, feel free to change it. This is supposed to be wholly personal to you, right? Okay, so now we need to make up a story with roof and woman that makes you think of cheap… Hmm…I can’t think of anything. That’s okay, the internet will help us.
Kanji Koohii
Kanji Koohii is a database of kanji stories that you can use for inspiration when you’re having trouble coming up with a story.
An account is required to use it. The info you have to provide is minimal, however, and the wealth of data you get access to in return is amazing so get to signing up.
Once you’ve done that and logged in, go to Study and then Browse. To see some stories for 安 you can search for the character itself, type in the keyword (relax), or just use Heisig’s number (202). All three of those things also work as a direct URL: http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/(insert query here)
http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/%E5%AE%89
http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/relax
http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/202
You’ll notice that there are lots of stories here that are fairly similar to the one I came up with as well as some stories from people that insisted on changing the keyword to cheap. There are even some stories that use both keywords such as this one from user Yojax:
the CHEAPest place to RELAX with a Woman is At Home
Actually, I think I like this story better than my own so this is the one I’m gonna commit to memory.
Now let’s take a look at a slightly more complicated example:
This is an 8th grade kanji and is #308 on Heisig’s list. The keyword is metaphor and that’s what the kanji itself means as well. It’s only used in one common word: 比喩 (ひゆ) which means… metaphor.
Again, we have a kanji composed of two parts. The first part is 口 (mouth) but what’s that second part? Well, if you check the Kanji Koohii site, you’ll see rather quickly that most people seem to be calling it a meeting of butchers. Why? What the heck does that mean? If you’re confused, it’s a good bet that someone else was too.
Try reading through all of the stories and you’ll probably find one that explains it. If not, head back to the kanji immediately preceding this one (just use the little back button in the browse section in the upper left) and see if anything is mentioned in their stories. Chances are, you’ll be able to figure it out by just using the website and not actually need to check Heisig’s book.
This part seems to be called a meeting of butchers because the top part looks kind of like a tent with a table, similar to the meeting kanji: 会. Butcher comes from the flesh radical (月 — which you may notice is actually the moon but is also used in all of the kanji for body parts) and the saber primitive (similar to 刀 — sword). However, if you look closely, you’ll notice that it’s not the normal saber primitive. The lines are bent and it actually looks like the flood primitive, similar to the く hiragana. Basically, it seems that the normal saber is usually used in the Chinese version of this character but the Japanese version seems to normally be written with the flood primitive. I think this is the only kanji that uses this particular combination of shapes so you’ll notice that some people give this a special keyword and call it the koo-koo butchers because of the くく. So, this one is quite complicated. But don’t worry, this is a rare case; most of them won’t be this difficult.
An interesting thing about this kanji is that a lot of Japanese people don’t know it. You probably don’t really need to know it either. So why should you waste time memorizing a pretty useless kanji, especially so early during our studies?
Well, remember, I said that kanji would be memorized in the order that is easiest for memorization and this one fits in here due to the kanji that come before and after it.
If you feel that a certain kanji is so useless that you don’t need to remember it, feel free not to. If it happens to come up in another kanji later, you can try memorizing it again at that time.
Another point to mention while we’re talking about “useless” kanji: you’re gonna get some name kanji (characters that are generally only used in names) that are really only useful as pieces to help you memorize more complicated kanji later down the road. I usually try to find a famous person or place to associate with the kanji to help remind me it’s a name kanji. You can feel free to do that, or just not worry about them too much.
Again, this is supposed to be personal to you so you can basically do whatever you think is best as you go along.
Hopefully by now you have a pretty good idea of how the method works. Now we need to get organized.
Next: The Apps
